Thursday, 14 May 2009

expenses

oh yes, I was always going to get there sooner or later

Mr Salter is all over the media being Mr Clean. Not the cleverest thing. Given that he claimed £1000 a month from 1997 until the rules changed in 2001 for a non-existent London property. How is that better than Elliot Morley's mortgage payments? The House of Commons authorities say that records from before 2001 have been destroyed, I have been told - but no organisation destroys its payroll records. Ever. And I still have my payslips, which show ACA (Additional Costs Allowance, as second home money was known then), so they still have Salter's. So sooner or later the fraud will be exposed. Most of those currently "disgraced" were acting entirely within the rules. Not so Mr Salter during those years. I showed him how to fill in the forms and advised him to get a place in London in order to comply with them. You would have done better to keep quiet Mr Salter. You took the money and went fishing in India with Reading solicitor Mike Robinson, bragging to him and others that the "grand a month" was paying for it. Don't you wish you hadn't?

Here is Mike Robinson by the way. You will notice that he mentions his fishing holidays in India.

11 comments:

If a solicitor knows about someone breaking the law, who is not a client and thereby covered by solicitor/client privilege, then surely they know they have a duty to report the matter? Should the solicitor be reported to the Law Society? Bearing in mind we all know that body is useless at dealing with corrupt solicitors, let alone one who has failed to do their duty as Mike Robinson seems to have done.

This just gets better by the day,some of the claims are of course rather trivial,although the principle is clearly the same,the worst offenders should be de-selected and hopefully prosecuted,irrespective of which party they come from.

Simply paying the money back is nowhere near enough - the intent to defraud US was clearly there and they have only agreed to repay because they were exposed in the first place.

All of us know that if we did the same in our jobs we would face the sack,and rightly so.Whoever has been AUTHORISING such claims also needs to be disciplined/fired too.

Well done to the Telegraph for exposing this scandal - you have done us all a great service.

Salter has just done the keynote interview on Radio 4 PM.He has described himself as a wonderful MP who is let down by all the nasty expenses crooks and has called for the 'criminals' to be sacked, chucked out and de-selected.Why is the media so craven in front of Salter? Why do they not pursue the lines taken by Jane on her blog?What hold has he got over the media?Why are they frightened to ask him tough questions? Is there one law for 99% of MPs and another for Salter?

The director of the Department of Finance and Administration said of him: "I consider some of his comments about his approach to the House rules regrettable. It is possible to draw the inference that Mr Salter has on occasions knowingly broken the rules for which this Department and others have a responsibility."